


where the spirit meets the bone

by Jo_B



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Episode: s07e02 Proof, Episode: s07e06 Epilogue, Friendship, Gen, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28392834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_B/pseuds/Jo_B
Summary: “Are you still going to freeze me out?” she asks, barely a whisper, and for a few long moments, he doesn’t look at her. "Reid?"“No,” is all he says, his voice cracking at the edges, but she is the only one close enough to hear.She is unconvinced.// Repairing a friendship takes time. A few missing scenes post 7x02.
Relationships: Emily Prentiss & Spencer Reid
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49





	where the spirit meets the bone

**Author's Note:**

> 'Missing scenes' feels like the wrong term to use, but as much as I adore their friendship, the resolution in 7x02 just felt a little too clean to me haha 
> 
> Morgan: "give Reid time"  
> The time: just the remainder of this one case, apparently
> 
> Just wrote a couple tiny scenes, referencing 7x06 as well because hoo boy did they miss an opportunity there. Also didn't proof this because I'm lazy! Hope everyone's having a good week xox
> 
> (Edit: I would _also_ like to clarify that this story isn't me condoning Reid's behavior in this episode, because it was kinda shitty lol -- I just imagine a case where even though a feeling isn't rational or justified, it's still human, and human beings are weird! Thank u for ur time lol)

“Are you still going to freeze me out?” she asks, barely a whisper, and for a few long moments, he doesn’t look at her. Eventually, he lifts his head just so, pulls his eyes up from a small sea of haphazard files, and turns – eyes cast just over her head.

“Reid?”

“No,” is all he says, his voice cracking at the edges, but she is the only one close enough to hear. The bullpen is not precisely quiet, but as the clock rounds on six o’clock, most people are gone and what conversation remains fades easily into the background.

She is unconvinced.

“It seems like you are.”

He came to Rossi’s. He clinked glasses and cooked dinner and sat and ate with everyone, but conversations between the two of them remain far and few between. The fight he had in him in Oklahoma, the anger boiling over – it all evaporated when their wheels touched down in Virginia.

She sees no overt tension. Just a tired person sitting a few desks away from her own.

He takes a deep breath.

“You know, in the second scene of the first act of _Hamlet,_ both the queen and Hamlet note that ‘all lives must die,’ and that it happens every day, but she asks why the death of his father _seemed_ so particular to him.”

Emily tilts her head as he continues.

“And he says, ‘Seems, madam, nay it is; I know not seems.’ He references the – the funeral clothes he’s wearing and how his behavior might look from the outside, and says, they cannot ‘denote me truly: these indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play: but I have that within which passeth show.’”

“Literary,” she remarks. “Is that all to say that you _haven’t_ been keeping your distance from me because you’re still upset?”

A pause. Reid begins to shuffle the pages of each file together, stack them neatly in his top-left desk drawer. His key goes in, turns, and he automatically pulls on the handle to double check. It doesn’t budge.

“It’s to say that sometimes, even the trained eye can’t see everything.”

They’re profilers, but it’s always been an imperfect art.

She nods slowly, turning it over.

“Reid, I said it on the plane, but it’s still true. I really am sorry for everything we put you guys through.”

He shakes his head.

“Reid—”

“Being sorry,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “would mean that you did something wrong.”

He leaves it at that, leaves her to consider the implication. She stares as he stands from his seat and throws his bag over his shoulder, pushes in his chair.

“Do you want to get dinner?” she asks, a long shot in the dark.

He freezes in place for a few moments. “I’d, uh… I’d like to be alone for tonight. Please.”

She’d be cruel not to allow him that.

“Okay,” she says softly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Goodnight, Emily.”

* * *

“I thought you should have this back,” she says, extending her arm. The book in her hand is familiar, but not too worn – he only ever needed to read it once. “It was packed up in storage with all of my things, and I just got everything moved back in.”

He stares at it for a moment, and looks back up at her. “Did you read it?”

“I started it,” she admits. “I think I was a quarter of the way in before… I had to stop.”

She was a quarter of the way in before she died and went to Paris. He doesn’t take it from her, but instead, keeps staring at the cover.

“I lent it to you to read,” he says quietly, and a flash of hurt flickers across his face before he can force it down. All at once, she is struck by a memory or two of standing in one of her high school hallways, returning a former friend’s, an ex’s, an acquaintance’s things in a box by a row of lockers. “Unless you don’t want to.”

“Oh!” she starts, pulling the book half-way back toward her chest. “No, I didn’t mean – I wasn’t trying to—”

She wasn’t trying to get rid of him, to erase the finer details of their friendship from her life. Sometimes, a book is just a book, but sometimes it isn’t: he’d lent it to her three weeks and four days before she died, and seven months, one week, and two days before she appeared in the conference room doorway because he thought she’d enjoy it.

“I just felt bad hanging onto it for this long,” she clarifies. “I liked it so far, but figured I could just buy my own copy.”

“I wasn’t missing it.”

A few moments of quiet stretch out between them, and finally, she pulls her arm all the way back and nods.

“Okay,” she says. “Yeah, then, I’ll finish this and get it back to you when I do.”

He offers a small smile. “No rush.”

“I’ll have the report on your desk by next Friday,” she says, and he can’t help but chuckle at the joke. “Double spaced, with Chicago citations.”

He finds a few pages neatly placed into the back of the book when he comes in a few days later, and keeps it taped to the bottom of his top desk drawer.

* * *

She finds him tucked into a seat in the back corner of the jet – universally but silently deemed the spot someone will choose when they want to be left alone.

Emily is not the first to ignore that unspoken request, and she will surely not be the last.

As she slides into the seat, the first thing she notices is that Reid’s eyes are screwed shut and his deep breaths are even and deliberate.

“Hey, you okay?” She keeps her voice quiet.

His eyes shoot open, and though he tries his best not to squint at her, there’s only so much he can do.

“Yeah, yeah.” He clears his throat and nods. “Just thinking.”

They’re leaving Idaho behind them, along with an unsub brought back to life, three months before he dies. The thought carries some weight.

“About?”

Garcia had estimated that he was unconscious on the floor of that shed in Georgia for three minutes. He knows what he saw before he woke up to Tobias’ hands on his chest, spent months coming back, back to the thought of the biggest thing he couldn’t explain.

Part of recovering from that was learning to be okay with not knowing for sure, but some days are more challenging than others.

He is silent for a long moment.

“I didn’t know you coded in Boston,” he says finally. He’s looking at her, but his eyes are somewhere far away.

“Yeah,” she explains. “It was – they told me it was only for about thirty seconds.”

The plane is quiet, save for them. Everyone else is dead asleep.

“Reid?” she asks again, because he’s squinting ahead and not quite answering her, but he finally nods after a few seconds.

“It’s not a cold, dark place,” he whispers. “For you, I mean. Whenever…”

He takes a sharp breath in, and slowly lets it out. “Whenever it _is_ time, you know… for you, it won’t be cold and dark.”

She looks at him carefully. “You sound like you know that for sure.”

“I do.”

“Care to walk me through your reasoning, Dr. Reid?”

“No.” He can only half-smile at her in the dim light. “I just know.”

She turns it over for a few moments before slowly nodding her head.

The night outside the plane is pitch black, and the sound of the engine is steady and comforting. They’ve got four more hours until they touch down in Virginia.

“Here,” she says after a short eternity, reaching into her bag. She pulls out a small bottle of Advil and gives it a small shake for good measure. “Think you could use this.”

He smiles at it and sighs. “Thank you, but that won’t work. I’ve tried.”

“Well, it was worth a shot,” she admits, putting it back where it came from. After a moment, she pulls out another bottle and holds it up. “Maybe this, then?”

Melatonin won’t fix the headaches, but they both know that full well.

“Head can’t hurt if you’re asleep.”

“Emily–”

“Worth a try?” she offers, and after a few seconds of deliberation, he takes the bottle from her hand and takes a single tablet.

“Thank you,” is all he says as he hands the bottle back, and perhaps to his slight surprise – she doesn’t leave.

He is asleep within twenty minutes, and when they touch down, she is still there when he opens his eyes.

* * *

Their earliest case in a long while pulls them out of bed at a quarter to five in the morning, and in spite of her honest to God love for this job and her team, she grumbles to herself as she pulls into the lot.

She loves what she does. She loves making a difference.

But sometimes, she loves getting full nights of sleep.

The sacrifices they all make.

She catches Morgan in the hallway.

“Am I late?” she smiles. The sun has yet to rise, and the light in the bullpen is so depressingly artificial.

“Just for being early,” he replies. “They’re presenting the case in ten.”

She drops her bag in her chair, but doesn’t miss an unexpected cup of coffee sitting on her desk.

“Oh, that’s nice,” she says. “Hotch never brought coffee for us before.”

She picks it up and reads the sticker on the side: her usual from a favorite local chain, still hot.

“Hey, nothing on my desk this morning. Looks like you’re special. And I think Hotch should be getting here now,” Morgan replies.

“Hm. Maybe J.J.?”

“Well, I’ll be having some words with her, then,” he chuckles. “Should have brought some for everyone. See you in there.”

She takes a sip and smiles.

Paris has some of the best coffee she’s ever had, but her favorites from home still manage to taste better.

She hangs her jacket on the back of her chair and heads for the conference room, where Garcia is setting up the presentation, Rossi is finishing a phone call, and Reid is sitting quietly at the table – looking through the case file with a matching cup of coffee in his hand.

“Good morning,” she says, grinning, a light tune on her voice. “What do we have today?”


End file.
